As is known in the art, the best performance of a phased array radar is achieved when the beam is pointing to the boresight, i.e., perpendicular to the aperture of the array. At the boresight location, the beam width is minimum and the antenna gain is the highest. One of the advantages of using a phased array radar is the ability to steer the beam without mechanical movement. However, when the beam is steered off the boresight, the beam shape is distorted with the beam width increased and antenna gain reduced. This reduction in antenna gain is referred to as scan loss, which can be estimated with Equation 1, which is set forth below:Lscan=10 log(cos(θ)x·cos(φ)x)  Eq.1,where θ is angle in the azimuth direction, φ is the angle in the elevation direction, and x is an empirical value, usually between 1.2 and 1.4.
To reduce the scan loss, one common practice is to have multiple faces of the phased array to cover the required scan angles. For example, for 360° coverage, a 4-faced radar has 1.8 to 2.1 dB less scan loss than a 3-face radar at widest scan angle. Some systems include a cylindrical phased array or phased array on the curved surface of the platform such as aircraft fuselage, which is called conformal array. For better elevation angle coverage, some phased arrays have a tilt angle, e.g., twenty degrees, to minimize the vertical scan angle for less scan loss.